The Salem Witch Trial Possessions

In the winter of 1692, a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony, began exhibiting strange behaviors that their community interpreted as demonic possession. Their accusations against neighbors sparked a witch hunt that would result in twenty executions, hundreds of imprisonments, and a permanent stain on American history. The Salem possessions remain the most famous case of alleged demonic activity in North American history.

The First Afflictions

The troubles began in the household of Reverend Samuel Parris, whose nine-year-old daughter Betty and eleven-year-old niece Abigail Williams started behaving strangely in January 1692. They screamed without apparent cause, threw objects, contorted their bodies into disturbing positions, and complained of being pinched and pricked by invisible forces.

Local physician William Griggs, unable to find a medical explanation, declared that the girls were under an “evil hand.” This diagnosis, the only one that seemed to fit the symptoms, set the community on a path toward disaster.

Other girls soon exhibited similar afflictions. Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard all began experiencing fits, visions, and torments that they attributed to spectral attacks by witches.

The Accusations Begin

Under pressure to identify their tormentors, the afflicted girls named three women: Tituba, an enslaved woman in the Parris household; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly woman who rarely attended church. All three fit the profile of social outcasts.

Tituba’s examination proved pivotal. Unlike Good and Osborne, who denied the charges, Tituba confessed to witchcraft. She described encounters with the devil, signing his book, and seeing other witches whose identities she did not know. Her confession confirmed the community’s fears and suggested a wider conspiracy.

The Possessed as Witnesses

The afflicted girls became the primary witnesses against accused witches. During examinations and trials, they would fall into fits whenever the accused looked at them. They claimed to see spectral versions of the accused tormenting them. Their visible suffering was taken as proof of the defendants’ guilt.

The girls’ behavior during legal proceedings was theatrical and terrifying to observers. They screamed that they were being bitten and pinched. They went into convulsions and had to be restrained. When an accused witch moved their hand, the girls’ hands moved involuntarily, as if controlled by witchcraft.

Expansion of the Crisis

As spring turned to summer, the accusations spread far beyond the original outcasts. The afflicted girls named respected church members, wealthy landowners, and even the wife of the colonial governor. The possession had become a weapon that could be aimed at anyone.

By May 1692, the jails were overflowing with accused witches. A special court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer, was established to try the cases. The court admitted spectral evidence, meaning the girls’ claims about what the accused’s spirits had done to them, over objections that the devil might impersonate innocent people.

The Executions

Between June and September 1692, nineteen people were hanged as convicted witches. One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death with heavy stones when he refused to enter a plea. Several others died in prison. Hundreds more were accused, and over 150 were imprisoned.

The victims included men and women, young and old, poor and prosperous. What they had in common was that the afflicted girls had identified them as tormentors. A few confessed, which paradoxically saved their lives, as confessed witches were not executed. Those who maintained their innocence went to the gallows.

The End of the Trials

By autumn 1692, skepticism about the proceedings was growing. Influential ministers, including Increase Mather, criticized the use of spectral evidence. When the afflicted girls accused Lady Phips, wife of Governor William Phips, the governor dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

A new court, which did not admit spectral evidence, tried the remaining cases. With the girls’ visions no longer accepted as proof, almost all remaining defendants were acquitted. By May 1693, the governor pardoned those still in prison.

Aftermath and Interpretation

The Salem community struggled to come to terms with what had happened. In 1697, the colony held a day of fasting and prayer for the tragedy. Judge Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for his role. Ann Putnam Jr., one of the chief accusers, publicly confessed in 1706 that she had been deluded.

Interpretations of the possessions have varied over three centuries. Some historians emphasize social tensions, boundary disputes, and factional conflicts in Salem Village as factors driving the accusations. Others point to ergot poisoning, which can cause convulsions and hallucinations, as a possible cause.

Modern psychological analysis suggests the girls may have experienced a form of conversion disorder or mass hysteria, where psychological stress manifests as physical symptoms. The intense religious culture of Puritan New England, with its emphasis on sin, the devil, and invisible spiritual warfare, provided a framework for interpreting these symptoms as demonic possession.

Legacy

The Salem witch trials became a byword for injustice based on irrational fear. The term “witch hunt” entered the English language to describe any persecution based on paranoia rather than evidence. The trials have been referenced in countless discussions of mass hysteria, religious extremism, and the dangers of abandoning due process.

Whether the afflicted girls of Salem were genuinely suffering, deliberately faking, or caught in some complex combination of both remains debated. What is certain is that their possession-like symptoms triggered a catastrophe that has served as a warning for over three centuries.